...and I feel so ashamed
I got nothing you’d need and you’re so hard to blame’ – Elvis Costello
Yet the proof of the pudding is definitely in the quality of the songs on this latest Larry Klein-produced album recorded at the Village in LA with a well-stocked cast of players including Larry Goldings on organ, Vinnie Colaiuta sharing drum duties, and a horn section arranged by Jerry Hey pus strings, strongly captured backing vocals, and glossy vintage production.
The songs are mainly Gardot’s although ‘Preacherman,’ based on the murder of black teenager Emmett Till in 1950s America, is a co-write with drummer Chuck Staab, and ‘Don’t Misunderstand’ is co-written with Jesse Harris famed for his work with Norah Jones, a singer who in the early part of her career, still an unknown, played the same Dean Street club where Gardot is to appear this summer.
Gardot displays a strong social consciousness in some of the lyrics and the album’s brooding atmosphere is faithful to this serious side with fed-in field recordings adding grittiness.
In the oceans of your eyes/lies a look I recognise.... Gardot
The singer is a throwback in a way and the album has been put together to reflect this, Gardot doesn’t seem to belong to the second decade of the 21st century, more like a lost-in-time presence transplanted from a Hollywood noir.
There isn’t a huge amount of jazz expression to her approach, sometimes more of a country twang, but I would say she operates in a beyond genre area that nonetheless has considerable appeal to jazz fans reaching out on the hunt for good strong songs. And there are plenty of them here, some that have immediate impact, some you just know you’ll be returning to. ‘Same to You’ has the strongest hooks of the early part of the album, the simplest most effective of the songs certainly. ‘Don’t Misunderstand’ takes a while to build and is better on subsequent listens. ‘Don’t Talk’ is something of a morality tale and Gardot sometimes assumes the role of singer-preacher, the lyrics here: ‘He who got the money man/gonna sleep alone at night’ the chorus nagging very effectively: ‘Say people are too hard tryin' to get it.Trying to get it wrong.’
I’m not sure if there is a big love song on the album but ‘If Ever I Recall Your Face’, a song of memory and loss, comes closest and maybe this is the biggest achievement of the album, voice against piano initially after the swell of strings and solo violin outpouring, that pained signature croon of Gardot’s curling inside the lyrics, the emotion added layer by layer with strings that could belong to a Max Steiner Hollywood score.
Where the album is less successful is in its sometimes mannered touches, say when saxophone takes a bar room-like turn on ‘Bad News’ a song that has too much melodrama in it and a slightly corny lyric “the bad news has arrived/it’s closing time” a rare duff turn. But Gardot is too sophisticated a writer and performer to fall into the trap of delivering neat outcomes to her songs and the album mainly avoids clichés.
The best groove from the band is provided on the funkier ‘She Don’t Know,’ an insightful selfie of a song about an innocent at large where gospelly backing vocals aid and abet the lyrics.
Currency of Man is concluded by the ballad ‘Once I Was Loved’ a slightly cormy song about lost unremembered love and youth that nonetheless explodes into a sort of greeting card bouquet of nostalgia, a song that Gardot nonetheless manages to inject with a lot of quiet power and could be a number that will connect most with older listeners out there. SG
The Pizza Express shows are on 3 and 4 August. Tickets and more details are here